Triple Overtime

During the regular season, a full sixty-minute hockey game at Verizon Center starts at 7pm and typically ends around 9:30. If there’s an overtime or a shootout, the game ends at the latest around 9:45pm.

On Wednesday, the Washington Capitals played their fifth game of the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs that went into extra time. When Marian Gaborik scored in sudden death to end the game — it was the next day and also the longest recorded game of the 2012 NHL postseason thus far, lasting an insane four hours and 34 minutes. One hour and fifty-four minutes of hockey was played that night. The game was the third longest in Capitals history, and the longest ever at Verizon Center.

So how do the players adjust to such a marathon game and what does the training staff on the bench do to help? I spoke to Capitals Equipment Manager Brock Myles and he revealed the staff’s methods of keeping the players energized, focused, and ready to play.

16 years ago when I was in middle school, I suffered through the second longest Capitals game in franchise history. The Caps were playing the Penguins in the 1996 playoffs and boy did I hate the Pens. Of course, you know the story. Petr Nedved ended the game in quadruple overtime with a harmless wrist shot from the sideboards past Olie Kolzig. The game ended around 2 AM and I cried all night. The next day, depressed and without any sleep, I failed both an English and a math quiz.

Well, apparently I’m not the only one that overtime playoff hockey does this to.

On Wednesday night, Hockey Night in Canada showed a montage at the end of the game showing Caps General Manger George McPhee freaking out during sudden death overtime. The normally poker-faced McPhee looks like the most uncomfortable man in the arena, standing up, sitting down, twisting and turning with the action as if he could steer the players. As the CBC announcer so beautifully states: “The pressure on McPhee: you can just see it in his face.”